5 reasons why I won't be using Windows 8

[Bob in a quantum-state-of-faith]

... ever, if I can manage it.

http://howto.cnet.com/8301-11310_39-57544323-285/five-least-intuitive-things-about-windows-8/

After reading the linked article, you'll see that Windows 8 has hard-coded gestures or in normal-speak, secret, special movements of your finger or mouse that cause critical functions to work.

I don't do gestures.  I just don't-- the whole idea in counter to my mantra:  the computer must be subservient to the operator.

Never the other way around.

(which also explains why I won't use an apple computer)

... meh.

Microsquish has really stepped in it with this one.

/end rant

[Sibling DavidH]

I wonder how I would get on with a touch screen; my fingers are pretty numb and clumsy fron diabetic neuropathy.  I never upgraade to these new versions but when you buy a new computer it seems a lot of trouble to install an older one.

[Bob in a quantum-state-of-faith]

I wonder how I would get on with a touch screen; my fingers are pretty numb and clumsy fron diabetic neuropathy.  I never upgraade to these new versions but when you buy a new computer it seems a lot of trouble to install an older one.

That's a very good question.  I do have an Android tablet, which is touch-screen.  And in the winter, when my skin is dry (from the cooler, dry air)?  I have issues getting the touch screen to recognize my fingers.  At those times, I either use the keyboard alternates, or else I use a capacitive stylus-- the metal body of the stylus has sufficient electrical contact with my skin, in spite of it being very dry.

I expect you'd have better luck with a stylus here.

In full disclosure, I should admit that I do love my touch-screen when it works.  The occasional times I use an "old fashioned" laptop, I frequently try to touch the screen rather than going for the mouse...

I expect that Win8 will have customized themes that match the older way of doing, given enough time.  I certainly hope so.  In any case, I have no immediate plans on experiencing it either now, or in the foreseeable future.

My hope is that Android or Chrome will be good enough for the desktop too, come time to replace my (now venerable it seems) Win7 desktop box.  (I've given up on Linux, as it just cannot seem to shake the geek-elitism culture in the way it does things...  I had had such high hopes for it too...)

[Sibling Zono (anon1mat0)]

Some of those are particularly egregious, like hiding the battery and the clock. I understand that a touch interface would be different from a regular mouse & keyboard one, but one of the nice things of the previous incarnations of windows was the elements a power user would find in obvious places; departing from the tried and true interface to something completely different , assuming that everybody will have a touchscreen, and dumbing down the interface while at the same time making power use harder sounds like a losing strategy [to a power user like me].

[Bluenose]

I've been to a couple of demos of Windows 8, the main issue IMHO is that although the Windows Desktop is available (minus the start button, but there is a way to access the menus) the real problem is that there does not appear to be any way to make it the default interface.  Windows 8 always boots into the tiled screen.  I cannot see this flying in a corporate desktop environment and suspect that the corporates will likely bypass this version much like they did with Vista.  Microsoft's focus appears to be on getting the installed base of XP users to upgrade, but in the corporate environment, especially those with volume licenses, I think the OS of choice for the time being will be Windows 7.  There are some good technical features in Win 8 and I think it is a pity that MS has focused on the consumer end of the market, particularly those using tablet type devices, without due consideration for the needs of business.

[Bob in a quantum-state-of-faith]

That is an excellent observation Zono, and yours too Blue.

I do think Microsoft has failed on this one, and big-time-- they forgot the bulk of their sales has been to corporations with volume buys (in purchasing/leasing mass quantities of desktops).  As such, they [businesses] have massive buying power and massive pull.

Linux or some variant of Android could well replace Microsoft in the near future; with that much pull, I could easily see a custom version of either one, specifically written to facilitate the specific needs of the business-- or at least, according to the IT people's perception of said needs.

As I understand it, most modern large-business models have all the major software "installed" in a central location (on some sort of server farm, down in IT) with minimal flat-install workstations at each desktop.  In some situations, everyone's desktop is exactly the same, with the login process creating a single-instance of the individual's desktop each time they login.   This makes all the desktops interchangeable, regardless of where they are within the businesses' network--including VPN "tunneling" through the internet.   Nice, in that your desktop follows you where ever you are in the virtual world.  Not so nice, if you need some custom software included to do some, specific set of tasks.

I wonder how Win8 will fit within all that?  As it purports to be "highly user customized"-- the network bandwidth required to send all that customization would be prohibitive on your typical distributed network-- imagine at 8am with several hundred custom profiles being pushed through a 10-base or 100-base network-- it'd lock up, and nobody would get anything done.

However, if the customization was saved on the local machine?  There goes your portability so highly prized (and pushed) from before.

I agree-- Win8 was not addressed to the business needs.

And?  I think the smartphone market is already saturated at this point-- the introduction of Win8-based smartphone may well be too little, too late.

Especially if it has a really steep learning curve at the beginning....

... time will tell, though:  there are a great many folk who see MicroSquish as the "be-all" and "end-all" of the computing world, not unlike IBM was once perceived about hardware.

Will M$ take a lesson from history?  IBM tried to force users to comply with arbitrary standards.  They lost-- and badly.  Does anyone know anyone who still uses an IBM desktop machine?  I know I do not-- and they don't even make IBM laptops anymore.

I wonder if this [Win8] isn't M$'s version of the ill fated microchannel & PS/2 that sunk IBM's dominance of the early PC market.

Time will tell-- for one thing, M$ has a bigger share of a larger market than IBM did in 1987.  And by 1987, IBM's dominance of the computing industry was already being eroded by the likes of Compaq and other smaller, but far more flexible companies.

[Aggie]

Every second addition of the Windows OS seems to be a dud... no surprise here.

Personally, I am getting pissed off with the smartphone/tablet format of operating that has started to take over the PC experience.  I recently had to help Dad figure out how to work with his contact lists on Hotmail... took some serious head-scratching to figure out what the heck was required.  Once I realized that it was now optimized for touchscreen and consisted mostly of large tiles and icons, I was able to find my way around it, but ugh....  I dislike the less-literate, dumbed-down 'chunky' feel of it. The world at large is being programmed to work with this platform, so luddites and holdouts will eventually have to retrain our brains to work with it, I suppose.  In part, I think designers have realized that they can create life-users by getting children hooked from toddlerhood, so they've dumbed down the interfaces to a level that a 2 year old can navigate easily, and are setting the neural circuits when they are nice and plastic.  This suggests to me that this sort of interface will be here to stay; the tech leaders of tomorrow are incorporating this into the very base of their human experience. The "tech will make us illiterate" cry has been raised many times, but it may be starting to look more legitimate, given that interfaces are moving away from character input and towards speech interfaces. Talking to computers creeps me out.

If anyone is familiar with the movie Idiocracy, Mike Judge did a good job of pre-anticipating the new media format.  I'm thinking specifically of the TV format shown in the movie and the hospital admissions system.

The constant format and appearance change trend in software/websites is also getting on my nerves (I'm looking at you, Google...). By the time I actually learn my way around the new format, it changes. It appears to be change for the sake of change, or perhaps to scramble you so badly that you start clicking ads in desperation (the same reason supermarket formats switched from a logical progression of aisles to a random mishmash in the 90's... you get so discombobulated that you end up buying things you didn't think you needed).

I'm currently having a tough time re-adapting to the new MS Office format; all the easily-accessible menus and tiny icons for functionality seem to have been scrambled and hidden.  I suppose there are ways to set it up to my liking, but I'm no longer a full-time user and don't want to muck about for hours trying to dial in my system.

[Bob in a quantum-state-of-faith]

Yes, you are not alone in hating the new Office layout-- many have complained bitterly about it.

So much so, that non-M$ variants have made even more inroads into what was formerly a virtual monopoly.  Which I see as a good thing.

As for dumbing down of things?  I agree totally-- there will come the day when kids not only can't do simple arithmetic, but they cannot even write at all.  I recall reading a story about such a future, where the latest fad was a computer/robot that you spoke to, but which used a pen and paper to record your words in your choice of cursive style.  It seemed that your average person no longer knew how to write-- they could read, sure, but writing was a forgotten artform.

And kids today already cannot add-- I'm constantly confusing the undereducated kids running the cash registers, by handing them additional currency, such that my change round out to whole things, for example, if my item was $6.71, then I'd hand them a $10 bill, and two $1 bills and likely as not, a penny.  Then I'd get a whole $5, and a quarter and a nickel back--- nice whole things (I don't like carrying pennies).   But whenever I do such things (which for me is automatic), they always look confused until they punch it into the idiot-computer and see why.   Then, as often as not, they look at me like I had super powers.... really.

When did doing simple arithmetic become a "super power?"

... meh.

[pieces o nine]

And kids today already cannot add-- I'm constantly confusing the undereducated kids running the cash registers, by handing them additional currency, such that my change round out to whole things, for example, if my item was $6.71, then I'd hand them a $10 bill, and two $1 bills and likely as not, a penny.  Then I'd get a whole $5, and a quarter and a nickel back--- nice whole things (I don't like carrying pennies).   But whenever I do such things (which for me is automatic), they always look confused until they punch it into the idiot-computer and see why.   Then, as often as not, they look at me like I had super powers.... really.

Although smart bosses bitch about this as well, you can thank Korprit Amurka™  for much of this. The big cash register (and related) companies marketed 'idiot-proof' tills which require keying in exact amount tendered so that mistakes -- whether due to clerk mistake or con-artist customer -- could not occur. Add to that 'teach to the test standard-du-jour and move on' pressure in the schools and the basic concepts can't be taught. It is worrisome and irritating, but it's being imposed on kids by adults  focused on their own short-term personal profit.   

[Bluenose]

Yes, one of my pet peeves is the inability of shop assistants to count out the change - you don't even really need to do the maths of you don't want to: price $3.75, $5 tendered = change is 5c to make it 3.80, 20c to make it $4 then $1.  Works for any amount and provides a simple check
that you have the change correct.  Not rocket science.

[Bob in a quantum-state-of-faith]

Indeed, counting back the change is an excellent second-check on a proper transaction.

I blame cheap hand calculators on modern kids' inability to do simple arithmetic-- as soon as teachers permitted these toys in math class?  The ball was up an rolling, with the end result being several generations of math-illiterate kids who's reliance on a calculator was deeply rooted.

I see the corporate adoption of icon-based point-of-sale machines as an attempt to salvage cheap labor from a pool of can't-do-arithmetic kids.  By coding in the "skills" into the POS* machines, they at least can reduce the errors of money-taking to a manageable level.

I spent my years in the retail-pits:  and in those days, we used paper-based 10-key machines.  That is, a simple machine that recorded each action on twin paper rolls-- one to tear off & give to the customer (if they wanted it) and one that re-rolled internally as a record of the shift's transactions.

At the end of a shift, you hit a key, and it would print out the beginning & ending money totals-- the beginning would match the amount the till started with, and on the paper ledger book.  The end should match the current amount in the till, minus any cash-drops--which were always recorded in the ledger book (and on the drop-safe too).

I learned that we never drop $1s, but could bundle these into $20 amounts to "hide" in a safe area away from the till-- these were also extracted & re-counted at shift change.    But excess $20's were bundled & dropped into the safe, the amount faithfully recorded in the paper ledger.

My tills were always within a $1, plus or minus--usually plus.  This was because the occasional customer would quip "keep the change" when he was going to get a few pennies back for his purchase (interestingly enough, I never heard that from women...).  I always left the excess in the till, as occasionally I'd mess up with the change, and short-change the store a wee bit.  Rare, but it happened occasionally.  But at the end of the shift, I was typically positive a few cents.  

The acceptable margin was around $5 or so, so it wasn't a big deal; we lost way more than that each shift, to theft anyhow.  I worked in a convenience store, on the 3rd or "graveyard" shift, directly across from a large and very ugly pile of government-subsidized housing.   So I frequently saw, at 3am, people come over to buy milk, eggs & bread... with their entire household of kids in tow, too.  In the middle of the week-- I often wondered if the kids bothered to attend school at all.  And if they did?  Did they learn much in the way of useful skills*?  Did they think it normal to shop for basic groceries at 3am on a weekday?  I was often plagued by these questions as I tended my till in the wee hours of the morning...

My register had about 15 keys or so, on it, 10 for the numbers of course, a sub-total, a total, a tax key (to display the tax-- never used it, as nobody asked), a non-tax key (in case of the rare non-profit/tax-exempt purchaser), and available via key-unlock, starting till, grand total, and a few other admin keys I never used or needed.

I do remember one time on one of my rare day shift-trades, when we had two people working the store and the power failed.   The general manager showed up with some battery-powered calculators with paper-tape print-outs, and a stack of generic paper receipts.  We kept the store going, sans power, for several hours with those-- if the customer wanted a receipt, we would write it out on the generic receipt pad.  We kept the paper receipt the calculator created for later, when we balanced the till.  I suppose the general manager took those, and meticulously added up everything at the end of that cycle, to balance the kitty-- it would fit with his meticulous personality.

These days?  If the power is out, the store's doors are locked, and the store is closed.  Nobody (including the general manager) would know how to work the tills... or even what the prices were!  (In my day, we simply memorized the prices of everything in the store-- there wasn't that may items anyway, and the obscure stuff had prices stamped on them by the vendor/supply people, who restocked as needed).

Today's unskilled labor is laughably unable to understand even basic change-counting.

... meh.

Which I find deplorable, myself:  I would ban all calculators-- including all cell phones-- from the classroom until after High School.  At least.  They can have either one back after class, if they want.

But they would be warned, they will be taking the math tests, without either cell or calculator, and if they don't pass?  They flunk basic math.

I don't care how rich their parents are.

I see basic math skills as a kind of birthright; it's a skill that all humans should have**, and to deny this to kids due to laziness or "because they don't like it" is simply evil.


__________

<sub>* apart from the street skills they picked up from their pals who had already dropped out, such as how to hot-wire a car, how to pick a lock, how to successfully steal stuff from a convenience store using accomplices, and of course, how to avoid notice from the indifferent cops in the area.  I've no doubt those skills they picked up early on... *sigh*

** barring proven mental issues, naturally-- some unfortunates lack these so basic of abilities.  But this lack should be tested and proven-- being poor or rich is not an acceptable excuse.</sub>  

[Swatopluk]

For that reason electronic calculators have been taken out of the lower grades over here again (actually quite long ago). We got them in 10th class only, at about the time we got analysis.

[pieces o nine]

Bob's story sounds familiar to me...   
...my boss in those days could almost have rung up a cart full of groceries in her head  with very few errors! I also  learned math from Dominican nuns, and there was no funny business with calculators in their classrooms!

Since then I've occasionally had to use a digital register which tells you how much money to give back. I count it from the till by the machine's posted change due (per strict  corporate regulations!), then again to the customer from the amount due back up to what they gave me. The (older) ones are shocked and almost grateful, and wax poetic about the good old days. 20-ish to 30-ish adults tend to be impatient with that -- they want receipt and change dumped onto their palm with a 'have a nice day' or something similar so they can run off quickly. Anyone younger than college seems amazed (how did you do that!) or suspicious (the machine says 'Change: $X' -- why am I trying to confuse them with these other numbers?).

I've tried to gently coach young employees to figure out how to deal with the 3 pennies I'm giving them. Some have enough innate math ability to get it; others get agitated and I just give up. I am not interested in explaining to a 'manager' (also in its teens, too often) that I am *not* trying to quick-change the till. I've also had kids tell me with distress, "We're not *supposed* to do it like that!!" when I've shown them how to count change. There is plenty of natural laziness in human beings, but I still think the combination of 'idiot proof' counting machines and 'regurgitate this answer for the test, but we don't have time to teach the concept' is disastrous. It leads to a public admirably suited to a Walmart-ruled world.   

I'm sure that is just a coincidence...

[Swatopluk]

One could compromise and use these instead of electronic calculators

[Aggie]

Surely you've seen the newer change-dispensing tills that don't even require employees to handle coins? Safeway uses them in most stores here (we also use coins for any denomination smaller than $5).  The machine just drops the change into a hopper for the customer.

I blame cheap hand calculators on modern kids' inability to do simple arithmetic-- as soon as teachers permitted these toys in math class?  The ball was up an rolling, with the end result being several generations of math-illiterate kids who's reliance on a calculator was deeply rooted.

----

Which I find deplorable, myself:  I would ban all calculators-- including all cell phones-- from the classroom until after High School.  At least.  They can have either one back after class, if they want.

But they would be warned, they will be taking the math tests, without either cell or calculator, and if they don't pass?  They flunk basic math.

I don't care how rich their parents are.

I see basic math skills as a kind of birthright; it's a skill that all humans should have**, and to deny this to kids due to laziness or "because they don't like it" is simply evil.

I disagree on one count, which is that I am quite slow at doing basic arithmetic. I'm accurate at it, and I can rearrange fairly complex algebra in my head quickly and efficiently, but give me addition or especially subtraction and division*?  I bog down and need to work it out on paper. I used to get frustrated to tears at the timed 'speed sheets' that we were given in elementary school, because although I'd have very few errors, my results would be sub-par relative to my general math skills.  I may be a little bit of a numerical dyslexic... I used to routinely confuse and transpose 4's and 5's. I'm also a perfectionist, and tend to double-check results to ensure I've got the correct answer.

_{*multiplication seems come come easiest to me}

I'm a proponent of calculators when students reach a level at which they are being tested on higher math skills (and have proven their ability to do simple arithmetic), simply to allow the time and mental effort to be applied to the non-arithmetic skills.  

Side note: I hated first-year calculus because our professor gave ridiculously long final exams.  I had little issue with the 2-hour midterms, but on the final, we were given a 3-hour slot to complete what for me was a 4-hour exam. I would tend to finish 75% of the exam, say, and get 73% as a final mark. NOT a fair assessment of my skills, IMHO.  So, while speed is important, it's also important to keep in perspective what the overall objective is.  From the professor's perspective, perhaps only students that could work both quickly and accurately deserved top grades, but this was never explicitly communicated.

[Swatopluk]

One possibility is to design the tests in a way that a calculator is of no use or only to add up the final results. That forces the students to think or do transformations by hand because the calculator can only do numbers and not deal with terms and results like 3a + 1.4b.

Maybe that's the reason why we had so many polynomial divisions to solve

[Bluenose]

My grandmother who passed away about 20 years ago used to be able to add up long columns of figures in her head way faster than you could even enter them into a calculator.  She had worked for many years as a bookkeeper for a number of businesses and her ability was simply amazing.  I have no idea how she did it, but she never got the total wrong so far as I am aware.  Mind boggling.

[Bob in a quantum-state-of-faith]

I disagree on one count, which is that I am quite slow at doing basic arithmetic. I'm accurate at it, and I can rearrange fairly complex algebra in my head quickly and efficiently, but give me addition or especially subtraction and division*?  I bog down and need to work it out on paper. I used to get frustrated to tears at the timed 'speed sheets' that we were given in elementary school, because although I'd have very few errors, my results would be sub-par relative to my general math skills.  I may be a little bit of a numerical dyslexic... I used to routinely confuse and transpose 4's and 5's. I'm also a perfectionist, and tend to double-check results to ensure I've got the correct answer.

_{*multiplication seems come come easiest to me}

I'm a proponent of calculators when students reach a level at which they are being tested on higher math skills (and have proven their ability to do simple arithmetic), simply to allow the time and mental effort to be applied to the non-arithmetic skills.  

Side note: I hated first-year calculus because our professor gave ridiculously long final exams.  I had little issue with the 2-hour midterms, but on the final, we were given a 3-hour slot to complete what for me was a 4-hour exam. I would tend to finish 75% of the exam, say, and get 73% as a final mark. NOT a fair assessment of my skills, IMHO.  So, while speed is important, it's also important to keep in perspective what the overall objective is.  From the professor's perspective, perhaps only students that could work both quickly and accurately deserved top grades, but this was never explicitly communicated.

But.  You admit that you do have the basic math skills, albeit a wee bit slower than average?  Then you qualify by my rule-- I never said how fast, and I do think timed tests, especially for difficult or higher maths, is wrong-- the student should be able to proceed at whatever pace works for him or her.  As you correctly pointed out, a timed test failed miserably to adequately test your skills.  And I sympathize too-- I was never fast at doing the higher stuff, I had to work through it each and every time. 

As for basic arithmetic?  I was supposed to have memorized that in the 4th grade.  Unfortunately, the school I attended was a "dump stat" school, wherein the kids were not pushed in any way at all; you could get the material or not, didn't matter to the school-- you passed regardless. 

So I struggled for the remainder of my schooling career with multiplication/division.  I eventually memorized it myself, but never did get it to become as automatic as breathing-- I had to use a "system" to remember the values.  I still use the same system even now:  to multiply multiple-digit numbers in my head, I routinely add  and/or subtract minor values to bring the two working numbers to something I already know the answer to, such as ending in zero or 5.  Then I either add back in the subtracted bits (after multiplying those separately from the usual memorized tables) or subtract, as required to get back to the original number(s).

This method also works for 3 and 4 digit multiplicands, and I used to do this sort of stuff in my head while tending that convenience store.   Yeah, it was exceedingly boring work, so I wanted something to distract me.

I would also add up the total in my head, and do the taxes too-- if my internal total did not match the paper-tape?  I knew I'd made a mistake somewhere, and I could check the tape.  Most of the time, I was in agreement.  Occasionally, I'd either have keyed in the wrong price, or added wrong.

But at first, I was not that fast-- it took months of daily practice.

Something I never got to do, back in school.

I suspect that with practice, you too Aggie could become quite quick at the basic maths as eventually it becomes sort of automatic, not requiring any real conscious effort.

But if you don't keep up with the skill?  It goes away... today, I don't do arithmetic like I did back in the 80's.  It takes some small effort on my part, and more often than not, I double-check myself with...

.... yeah, I realize the irony, here ...

.... the calculator built into my cell phone...

.... I blame it on being older than 50.

[pieces o nine]

Attitude plays an important role as well. When I found geometry my math ability blossomed because it was a kind of thinking that came naturally to me. I liked it and enjoyed the challenge of tackling next steps. But the more abstract the math becomes, it's like a window shade pulls down in my mind and I could not *be* less interested. I will cheat and use a proportion wheel to scale images rather than that cross-multiplication/cross-division equation because I freeze and have to 'practice' on simple conversions (like 50% and 200%) to make sure I am working it properly! Similar experiences in other academic subjects, but with their inherent emphasis on reading and verbal (always my strength) I didn't notice at the time how much my personal interest level affected my learning --and retention -- curve.

I can switch easily between inches and picas from doing print graphics, and use a 1 pica = 1 foot scale in personal drawings because picas divide so nicely by 12 without getting clunky. I can do this with as little thought as breathing -- mostly because it was my idea and I like  it! Ask me to convert imperial to metric: I need time and am never quite sure of the results. I also have to give some thought to time zone conversions and gas mileage. I've never applied myself to those and they don't come easily. Still, I understand the equations and can work them out, which is more than many 'kids today' were taught/or learned to do.

[Griffin NoName]

Just followed your link Bob.

Windows 8 sounds a) useless b) ulltra irritating c) almost impossible to use

I find all touch screen interfaces*** hard to use, and the complex swiping beyond me. I am obviously not alone in this so what are we all supposed to do?

And in particular why hide IE10 tabs, and why do away with white on red corner crosses to close applications (so what if they don't degrade performance, I hate having stuff around that I have finished with).

<sigh>

***even with a stylus

[Bob in a quantum-state-of-faith]

Exactly!  Why mess with the long-standing and well proven interface?

Hiding stuff is why I dumped Firefox for Android-- they "helpfully" hid all the standard controls underneath a secret* swipe gesture.

As I said in my OP, I do not plan on going to Win8 anytime soon-- I'm already happy with Android's ICS anyway.   



________________
* secret to me, at least-- I'd already dumped it when I read about how to get them back, if for only a second

[Griffin NoName]

It all seems to be in order that 3 year olds can manage apps. We get old so much younger nowadays.

My grandmother who passed away about 20 years ago used to be able to add up long columns of figures in her head way faster than you could even enter them into a calculator.

My father-in-law, long since gone, could do "Purchase Tax" in his head, which I vaguely remember being 3/22 of price. Or some such ridiculous value. Of course, he could have been making it up, and fixing it at the till afterwards - he ran his own shop. I used to love helping out, except when I had to climb the ladders to get stuff off the top shelves (old-fashioned shop stuffed to the gills, with many shelf levels going up skywards) which worried me a bit as it was 1960's with very short skirts. (no idea why I didn't wear trousers when helping out).

[Sibling Zono (anon1mat0)]

When real state is at a premium (like in a smart phone) hiding things does make sense provided that bringing them back is easy, but if you have more real state, like a laptop, or worse, a desktop, hiding stuff doesn't make sense.

Not to say that the opposite is desirable, like the 200+ toolbars that everybody wants to install in regular browsers, but why hide something that you will be using constantly?

Where are pragmatic and selective at these interface design meetings?

[Bob in a quantum-state-of-faith]

Where are pragmatic and selective at these interface design meetings?

Hiding in the closet, of course.



I blame Apple myself:  they had to seem "innovative", "new" and "fresh"... else why bother to upgrade/buy-the-latest-one?

So they felt like they deliberately had to change things up with each new version--even if there was no real need to do so.

But I maintain that form must follow function, or else you are a slave to fashion.   The hammer has not changed in any functional way since it was invented thousands of years ago the first time some enterprising human first attached a stone to a stick with sinew or vines.  You still have a lever (stick/handle) attached to some sort of weight that you swing to hit stuff, multiplying the leverage inherent in your forearm by ... alot (over simply holding the weight directly in your hand).

Just as a baseball, when hit by a bat, will travel much-much farther than a handball hit directly by a hand-- again, the club (baseball bat) has not functionally changed since it was invented either.

Form follows function.

Anytime the "designers" forget that lesson?  The human becomes a slave to fashion/design.  _{(why I do not do Apple)}

[Griffin NoName]

Luckily square wheels were never fashionable.

[Bob in a quantum-state-of-faith]

Luckily square wheels were never fashionable.

Indeed.  The TV show Mythbusters, actually built 4 square wheels to see how it'd work...

... episode here (may not play in the UK, though... sorry)

http://dsc.discovery.com/tv-shows/mythbusters/videos/square-wheels.htm

If you cannot get the video to work, they did mount 4 square wheels they had carefully hand-crafted out of plate-steel, then they bolted on rubber treads from 4 oversized tires.  They drove it on both pavement, in dirt and on deliberately bumpy roads. 

They discovered that the 4 corners did not give any additional traction or "bite" in soft ground-- just the opposite, in fact (good round, dirt tires had superior traction for example).

[Griffin NoName]

I found out how to do stuff in W8 which were not as hidden as i thought. start menu just left click bottom left screen, or right click for some other function so can get at control panel. http://www.techradar.com/news/software/operating-systems/10-best-hidden-features-in-windows-8-1117304

swiping credit /debit card across card reader with no pin needed to pay in "cash" sounds like a great improveement until I started thinking about how easy to steal the card. Burglars can have a merry time, swipe, swipe, swipe.

[Bob in a quantum-state-of-faith]

Indeed.  I will never own one of those RFID cards that you merely wave at the reader-- an illicit reader sitting next to you on the bus, or in the plane, or on the escalator or even in an elevator?  And *poof* you are paying for his trip to Tahiti....

[Aggie]

It all seems to be in order that 3 year olds can manage apps. We get old so much younger nowadays.

This is the most profound reason to make such a system, no? Hook 'em at 3, keep 'em for life.